Is the world really 4.5 billion years old

Whitsuntide said:

You have to admit that it is possible the universe was created with the appearance of age.

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Yes, in precisely the same way as you have to admit that it is possible the universe was created by a Quantum Unicorn Fart. So what?

Deut. 10:19 said:

Yes, in precisely the same way as you have to admit that it is possible the universe was created by a Quantum Unicorn Fart. So what?

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You're always good for a giggle Deut. I would give you frubals, but I've already given you some today and am not allowed again.

Whitsuntide said:

Here I go again...I'm going to make this point if it kills me...
You have to admit that it is possible the universe was created with the appearance of age.
The spiritual reason would be to frustrate our understanding, which has far greater spiritual value than knowing for sure the exact age of the earth.

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It may just kill you.

Why would there be a purpose to hold back our reasoning, intelligence, and logic skills? How does this supposedly qualify as "spiritual understanding"? First off, one would think, or at least hope, that a creator would WANT us to learn and grow instead of blindly accepting that the sun revolves around the earth and what-junk. Second, if a creator did in fact create everything, then it created how radiation works and the degradation of which. Our scientific principles are based off nature...which some think was CREATED by a GOD. If this is so...then GOD gave us the ability to learn and experiment and find out this information on our own. This information which negates the literal interpretation of HIS own word. WHY would this be done??? Come on and think about this. NONE of this makes sense...Young Earth/created Old Universe...neither work.

Whitsuntide said:

The spiritual reason would be to frustrate our understanding, which has far greater spiritual value than knowing for sure the exact age of the earth.

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If you believe in God as the creator of our understanding, then why would the same being who created our understanding want to frustrate it? That seems to me to posit a devious god.

You have to admit that it is possible the universe was created with the appearance of age.

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If you will admit it is possible that little magical leprechauns ride into my room on their little miniature unicorns every night and steal my underwear, only to replace it by morning with me being none the wiser, I will admit that your allegations are possible.

Whitsuntide said:

Here I go again...I'm going to make this point if it kills me...
You have to admit that it is possible the universe was created with the appearance of age.
The spiritual reason would be to frustrate our understanding, which has far greater spiritual value than knowing for sure the exact age of the earth.

Click to expand...

It is "possible," I guess. But I don't see how this would frustrate our understanding. It would only be frustrating if we knew that the earth was created old, but then there is no confusion because we would know. So if we knew, the only confusion would be what people here seem to be stating: why would God created the earth old? Frankly, this is an unnecessary new dimension to an unanswerable question (why would God create the earth to begin with?).

scitsofreaky said:

It is "possible," I guess. But I don't see how this would frustrate our understanding. It would only be frustrating if we knew that the earth was created old, but then there is no confusion because we would know. So if we knew, the only confusion would be what people here seem to be stating: why would God created the earth old? Frankly, this is an unnecessary new dimension to an unanswerable question (why would God create the earth to begin with?).

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Thank you Scitso. Why God would create the earth to begin with is an unanswerable question. Other unanswerable questions are: time, the essence of matter, gravity, death, etc. We will never understand anything about this universe at its foundation, because God is not interested in our understanding. He is interested in something to do with character of our "souls", for lack of a better term.
That is why it is so patently obvious this existence is a test. If we knew the "why" of anything, it would be like going into your GMAT with the answer sheet. The test is no good. To test someone, you have to put them in a difficult situation, like me in this forum. To make it a good test, you can't give away the answer. God is not going to appear in the sky and say, "I am real" in a thousand different languages. He has created every thing, including the earth, so that one person can say, "it is flat", one can say, "it is round", one can say, "it is old", and one says, "it is new".
The point is that God can say, "Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundations?" and you can say, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
According to the old testament, God was pleased with this answer.

Sunstone said:

If you believe in God as the creator of our understanding, then why would the same being who created our understanding want to frustrate it? That seems to me to posit a devious god.

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Sunstone,
Would that make God devious, or just mean he/she is interested in something else, i.e. proving he/she is God and ensuring your humility?

Whitsuntide said:

Thank you Scitso. Why God would create the earth to begin with is an unanswerable question. Other unanswerable questions are: time, the essence of matter, gravity, death, etc. We will never understand anything about this universe at its foundation, because God is not interested in our understanding. He is interested in something to do with character of our "souls", for lack of a better term.
That is why it is so patently obvious this existence is a test. If we knew the "why" of anything, it would be like going into your GMAT with the answer sheet. The test is no good. To test someone, you have to put them in a difficult situation, like me in this forum. To make it a good test, you can't give away the answer. God is not going to appear in the sky and say, "I am real" in a thousand different languages. He has created every thing, including the earth, so that one person can say, "it is flat", one can say, "it is round", one can say, "it is old", and one says, "it is new".
The point is that God can say, "Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundations?" and you can say, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
According to the old testament, God was pleased with this answer.

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Good answer. But if it is a test, what are we supposed to do?

Draka said:

It may just kill you.

Why would there be a purpose to hold back our reasoning, intelligence, and logic skills? How does this supposedly qualify as "spiritual understanding"? First off, one would think, or at least hope, that a creator would WANT us to learn and grow instead of blindly accepting that the sun revolves around the earth and what-junk. Second, if a creator did in fact create everything, then it created how radiation works and the degradation of which. Our scientific principles are based off nature...which some think was CREATED by a GOD. If this is so...then GOD gave us the ability to learn and experiment and find out this information on our own. This information which negates the literal interpretation of HIS own word. WHY would this be done??? Come on and think about this. NONE of this makes sense...Young Earth/created Old Universe...neither work.

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Draka,

Let's approach this from another angle. Let's say the Earth is a few billion years old and we evolved on it. Or God created it old and put us on it midway through after the dinosuar thing didn't work out. Regardless, we know very little about it at this point in our evolution. Somehow we've evolved a brain able to comprehend something that does us no good, has no survival advantage, which is to contemplate our existence. Perhaps it was a side effect of our brain evolving to manipulate things with our opposing thumbs.
Some people may have faith that humans will one day come to the bottom of all understanding (prove the big bang, I guess). Then we will know for sure how the earth came to be. God gave us this ability to reason and understand, and we should use it, right?
We'll perhaps even some day prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what there was before the big bang. We'll understand exactly why things live and die, whether there is a "soul" or "spirit" and what happens to them before and after their existence here on this earth. We'll understand time and why there is time.

Then who will we be?

Merlin said:

Good answer. But if it is a test, what are we supposed to do?

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Merlin,
Can I give out frubals? I'd give you a million.
That is the question I think we should be spending every minute contemplating, and perhaps what God, if there is one, is after.
Got any ideas?:woohoo:

Thank you Scitso. Why God would create the earth to begin with is an unanswerable question. Other unanswerable questions are: time, the essence of matter, gravity, death, etc. We will never understand anything about this universe at its foundation, because God is not interested in our understanding. He is interested in something to do with character of our "souls", for lack of a better term.

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Sounds like you've set an arbitrary bar. I'd bet that, pushed back 3000 years, you'd say the same thing but with "why the sun rises" and "weather" and "why people get sick" as some fo your "foundations of the universe".

It's interesteing, given 4 forces, that you picked gravity and not electormagnetism. You also presume there is somethign more to understand about death than is already understood. What about death confuses you?

That is why it is so patently obvious this existence is a test. If we knew the "why" of anything, it would be like going into your GMAT with the answer sheet. The test is no good. To test someone, you have to put them in a difficult situation, like me in this forum. To make it a good test, you can't give away the answer. God is not going to appear in the sky and say, "I am real" in a thousand different languages. He has created every thing, including the earth, so that one person can say, "it is flat", one can say, "it is round", one can say, "it is old", and one says, "it is new".

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An awful lot of religions (including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) disagree with you, claiming that God has done just that.

How about: There is no got, life is not a test, and we don't know "all the answers" yet because they are hard to establish? That seems to work just as well and removes all the extranious assumptions.

The point is that God can say, "Where were you when I laid the Earth's foundations?" and you can say, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
According to the old testament, God was pleased with this answer.

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According to the old-testement God did indeed appear in person and proclaim himself. He did indeed walk with Adam, and Abrham, and Noah, and Moses, and the Apostles and dictate out; and let's not foget Jesus (assuming you want to go into the NT as well)

Kind-of defeats your "God's not going to appear and say 'I am real'" when you believe that he has.

Would that make God devious, or just mean he/she is interested in something else, i.e. proving he/she is God and ensuring your humility?

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Devious: not straightforward : cunning; also deceptive

It seems to me makeing a 10k earth look 4.5b years old is pretty definitionally "deceptive" and therefore "devious".

Let's approach this from another angle. Let's say the Earth is a few billion years old and we evolved on it. Or God created it old and put us on it midway through after the dinosuar thing didn't work out. Regardless, we know very little about it at this point in our evolution. Somehow we've evolved a brain able to comprehend something that does us no good, has no survival advantage, which is to contemplate our existence. Perhaps it was a side effect of our brain evolving to manipulate things with our opposing thumbs.

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Sort of. Want to know what the survival trait actually was?

Precognition.

We've developed a brain that can see tracks on the ground and realize that means the animal was here; or can see lots and know they come here a lot. We can remember that the winters came and plan for the next one, or that leaving our food out attracted predators. We can see the future through past events and deduction; and that's been very useful for us.

It also means we see our own death, and it's inevitability... which is rough because we have an instinct that say "don't die". Not a problem for an animal who'se only concepts include "need to eat now" and "run frmo the predator"... but pretty nasty with precognition.

So we invent an afterlife so that we can lull our brains into thinking that there isn't an inevitable death.

Some people may have faith that humans will one day come to the bottom of all understanding (prove the big bang, I guess). Then we will know for sure how the earth came to be. God gave us this ability to reason and understand, and we should use it, right?
We'll perhaps even some day prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what there was before the big bang. We'll understand exactly why things live and die, whether there is a "soul" or "spirit" and what happens to them before and after their existence here on this earth. We'll understand time and why there is time.

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I suspect we will one-day answer that which is answerable. There are other things which are not due to a lack of evidence.

Seyorni said:

Let me see if I'm following this...
God deliberately creates a confusing, unknowable universe; full of contradictions, trompe l'oeil, and intellectual illusions in order to dissuade us from trying to make sense of it, so that we will cease questioning and simply accept the world as it is, magically created and without mechanism?

My cats do exactly this. They question nothing. They live in blissful ignorance.

Are they, thus, the paragon of animals, god's chosen people? Are you suggesting we should emulate the four-legged folk and turn off our minds?

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Seyorni,

I don't know that you are far off. I have heard a lot of preachers refer to their followers as a flock of sheep. Seems a pretty good analogy of what they want. Obedient, non-thinking folks who just follow along with where the shephard leads them, and getting fleeced to the tune of 10%.

My favorite is when the preacher talks about those tithes being 10% above the line. Very spiritual. And for those who are wondering, above the line means 10% before taxes are taken out of your paycheck.

B.